


Fools For Love

by Tarlan



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-06-08 04:35:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6839281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan thought he would automatically fall in love with Paige but she wasn't Audrey... and then William showed up, turning his life completely upside down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fools For Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roseveare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseveare/gifts).



> **Roseveare** asked for: _Imagine a few years down the line when everyone's got on with their lives. Paige settled in Haven but things with Nathan were just too weird. Maybe Duke's still around, but he's also out of reach. Nathan keeps going for the town, and the rebuilding process is about complete now. Then William shows up, maybe goes for Paige first, but she doesn't recognize or warm to him anymore than Nathan. But William and Nathan... they're still bonded from their gestures of mercy to each other. Maybe William realizes the potential of the leftover aether in Nathan from Croatoan's actions in the finale. Maybe he still has plans for mischief using Nathan's aether, or maybe he's just found the replacement for the missing half that was torn away from him with his destroyed connection to Mara._
> 
> I hope I managed to include a few of those 'likes' :)

At one time Nathan truly believed he could fall in love with any incarnation of Audrey, conveniently forgetting how much he had hated Mara. However, he had barely known Sarah, certainly not long enough to see her as a separate person to Audrey, and had not much cared for Lexie even though he learned later she was Audrey pretending to be someone else. Every incarnation was obviously beautiful and smart as they all shared the same form, and all except Mara was known to be kind. They wanted to help those Troubled, to alleviate their pain and suffering, finding ways to reach inside of the Troubled person and help them control their curse, or stop them from hurting others if all else failed, and he believed that was why he would fall in love every time.

Paige had Audrey's face and smile. She had Audrey's kind heart too, but she had none of Audrey's memories, none of their shared experiences from years spent working and fighting and making love together. They were virtual strangers dancing around each other and the minor differences between the two personalities, of differing likes and dislikes, simply highlighted his loss. On some level he even started to resent Paige a little for not being Audrey, and that wasn't fair on either of them.

"Do you really want me to spell it out for you?" Duke asked skeptically, casting him a sideways glance as they sat on a bench overlooking the harbor.

Nathan still felt a pang of guilt whenever he saw Duke. He blamed Croatoan for what had happened, forcing him to kill Duke before he destroyed everyone, and if it wasn't for Dwight fervently believing in both his daughter and in Duke then Duke would have faded away when Croatoan went into the newly constructed Barn, lifting the Troubles. He knew Duke didn't hold a grudge, rolling his eyes whenever he noticed Nathan's guilty expression, but it would take longer than two years for that particular wound to heal. Duke rolled his eyes... again.

"Nathan?"

With a sigh Nathan gave a half-shrug. On the day he and Audrey met, her touch ignited senses he'd long since believed completely dead. Until William showed up she was the only person who could touch him and make him feel anything... Everything.

"Touch starved," Duke stated, as if he had followed Nathan's thoughts.

After years of feeling nothing, perhaps he had latched onto the one person who could make him feel again, but with the Troubles gone Nathan no longer needed the same connection through touch. Now he felt every sensation from the wind brushing across his skin to the pain of stubbing his toe when he got out of bed that morning.

"You imprinted on Audrey like a duckling." Duke smiled slyly. "Which makes me wonder what would have happened if William had come back first?"

Nathan glared at the unrepentant grin, wishing he'd never shared his lack of preference over gender with Duke. He knew that would come back and bite him one day. He could hardly admit to Duke that these days he thought of William more often than he thought of Audrey, as that would lead to too many questions. He'd never told anyone about seeing William in the void, not even Audrey. At the time they had too much else to do, trying to stop Croatoan, losing Duke by his own hand, and then losing Audrey. Now it seemed pointless as Paige had no memory of William and everyone else involved in stopping the Troubles had hated the man.

Duke glanced at him sideways and Nathan knew that look all too well. It was the look Duke got when he was about to admit obliquely to having done something that would annoy Nathan. Usually something that bordered on illegal.

"I've been seeing Paige." He held up his hands. "Just drinks but..."

Nathan looked away, focusing on the distant horizon as the momentary flash of anger fell away. Duke had loved Audrey, and even Mara in her own way, so it was hardly surprising that he had fallen for Paige too. The hard part was knowing James was the reincarnation of his son with Sarah, and he'd be walking away from being James's father if he walked away from Paige. Yet it was the right thing to do for him and for Paige, and for Duke. He knew now that this talk was Duke's way of asking for his blessing - or at least his forgiveness - and after all that had passed between them, it was the least he could offer.

"I need to find out who I am without Audrey... or Paige." 

He held out a hand and was surprised to be pulled into a hug, and Nathan felt strangely relieved when Duke walked away smiling, as if a crushing weight had been taken from his shoulders and chest.

****

**Three Months Later:**

Thoughts of William continued to plague him, and sometimes he felt moments of anger or sadness or fear; emotions without substance or reason. Inexplicable emotions, as if he was feeling them second hand. If he had not known for certain the Troubles were gone then he might have blamed it on a Troubled person projecting their emotions, instead he had to accept it was all in his head. Perhaps a form of PTSD from the years spent unable to feel while fighting against all manner of strange troubles, with too many losses and too much mental anguish. Today had been particularly bad, with raw emotions crowding his head and making it hard to concentrate.

"I'm heading out early," he told Stan, needing to clear his head.

He drove to the lookout and walked a little way up the hill, stopping when he reached a good vantage point for seeing the town laid out below. Despite all the Troubles, it was still a quaint harbor town, and the new lighthouse looked almost too clean and bright set against a perfect blue sky and calm sea.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Nathan whipped round, drawing his gun as the familiar voice came from behind him, catching the flare as a thinny closed.

"William," he snarled.

William put both hands partway in the air in an open and defensive gesture, smiling mischievously. "You're not really going to try to shoot me, are you?"

"This isn't the void. Guns work here," but Nathan lowered the gun a fraction anyway. He thought he had seen the last of William after giving him Croatoan's ring, a ring that Charlotte said could be used to open a thinny back to William's people. He had wondered if William had returned to his people or stayed in the void, and now he had his answer. "Why are you here?"

"What you really want to know is why I didn't go back to my people?" William gave him that annoying, superior smirk, but the smirk fell away. "It stung," William stated, leaving Nathan confused. "What the guardian said at the destroyed Barn."

Nathan narrowed his eyes. "You're annoyed because she chose me?"

William gave Nathan a confused and irritated glare. "No.... Yes, but not... I thought the Barn was put there to punish Mara. Stripping her of her identity and forcing her to undo all the Trouble we caused. My punishment was the void. I spent five hundred years trying to find a way back while being hunted by others they had banished over the centuries. Trying to keep one step ahead of Croatoan. Always afraid. Always..." He frowned. "Wasn't I worth saving too? Didn't I deserve a chance at redemption?"

He knew William had similar strengths and weaknesses to ordinary humans but had made it clear from the start that he didn't consider himself human, seeing the people of Haven as inferior creatures in comparison - like ants. Even Charlotte had that same superior air about her during their initial interactions. He knew from Charlotte that her people put Mara in the Barn because her mother convinced them there was still good inside her, that she could become more like Audrey Parker, but even after five hundred years it had made no difference. Mara had done far worse than William once she was free to roam Haven, and she had committed her heinous acts with no motive other than the pleasure of seeing her terrifying handiwork in action, full of rage and a callous disregard for all life, like her father, Croatoan. 

They had not looked for any good in William, or they had not cared to look, exiling him just as they had exiled Croatoan.

"Maybe they didn't believe you could be redeemed," Nathan replied nastily, yet he recalled William crouching before him, making idle threats of unknown consequences if Nathan ever revealed his change of heart in letting him return to Haven, to Audrey, rather than killing him outright.

William placed a hand over his heart, his sarcastic tone belying his words. "I'm both hurt and offended."

Nathan recalled the devastation in the void, caused by Croatoan. Five hundred years in the void had done nothing to change William's mentality because, unlike Mara's reincarnations, he'd not been given the opportunity to learn and grow, to redeem himself. Instead, he had spent those centuries trying to survive in a harsh, unforgiving land, constantly afraid for his life and probably fixating on saving Mara as his only means of holding on to what sanity remained. His actions in Haven were heartless and cruel, putting a terrible Trouble on a baby just to force Audrey to look deeper into her psyche, to find the pieces of the woman he loved lying buried within and set Mara free, but Nathan knew he was only marginally better than William in that respect. He had murdered Agent Howard to save Audrey for himself, and in doing so he had condemned the whole town and caused the death of so many people by freeing first William, then Mara, and finally Croatoan. He could lay blame for every death caused by the Troubles from the time the barn was destroyed down to his selfishness, his unwillingness to let Audrey go, and in the end he had lost her anyway.

William, Mara, and Croatoan. He had considered each of them as blackhearted as the aether they wielded with such devastating results.

Yet those few hours in the void between worlds had revealed more about William than all the weeks spent fighting him in Haven. Here was a man who had spent five hundred years trying to save the woman he loved only to discover he'd been little more to her than a tool, to be used and discarded once she found someone of better use. Even if Mara had still lived Nathan could tell from William's expression that he had nothing left to give her. All she had wanted from him was the pure aether she craved and he'd simply fooled himself into believing he was worth more than that, that he was special to her.

In those last few minutes William implied his one act of compassion, of mercy towards Nathan, was just to spite Mara after accepting the truth about her but Nathan had spent his life as a Police officer, reading people, and he saw deeper than William intended. He saw a man who had nothing left and he saw a reflection of himself in William that day in the void, both of them fools for love, and with both Mara and Audrey gone forever, leaving them lost in a different kind of void.

He recalled the expression on William's face when he gave William the ring, and he wondered now how long it had been since someone - anyone - had shown him any compassion. Nathan also remembered the soft words as he turned to leave, with William offering him a chance to stay in the void with him rather than face Croatoan back in Haven.

'Humans don't do well in the void,' he had said earlier but Nathan wondered if William had a cure for that particular problem that he hadn't been willing to share until then.

The uneasy feeling within Nathan seemed to amplify for a moment, coming at the same time he noticed an almost imperceptible shift in William's expression. He thought of all the strange emotions that seemed out of place over the past weeks and suddenly he knew they were not all his emotions.

"You have got to be kidding me," he murmured, echoing William's words from earlier, and just to confirm his suspicion he punched himself in the arm, and saw William wince and jerk the same arm.

William had been connected to Audrey through Mara, causing the town so much consternation as there was nothing they could do to William physically while he remained in Haven without hurting Audrey in the process. Or rather there had been nothing except one blow - a low one admittedly - but that was out of the question as they were both men, though if ever there was a time when he wished he was still troubled then it was now, if only to wipe the smirk off William's face. For a moment he considered it anyway.

"You hurt me, you hurt yourself," William stated.

William must have read something in his expression as his blue eyes widened in alarm, and in that moment Nathan realized William had been playing the 'superiority card' as a bluff to gain the upper hand. Nathan straightened and loomed over the shorter man and he felt the unease come off William in waves, catching the fearful flicker of his eyes before that smirk was back in place and William squared up to him. Nathan had to respect William for that at least, as it proved the man was no coward despite his cruel and cowardly actions in the past.

"So what happened? You went back to your people and they welcomed you about as well as I expected?"

He watched the tic in William's jaw that proved he'd scored a direct hit. Nathan could guess why they had sent him back into exile, because his actions in Haven had proved those five hundred years hadn't changed him into a better person. Perhaps they had some grand idea that once Mara was reformed then she in turn would help William - if he survived that long in the void. Their plan for redeeming Mara had failed because even with all of the memories from those other personalities like Lucy, Sarah, and Audrey, Mara was too broken to fix. Except none of this explained why William was back in Haven and connected to him... unless...

"This is my punishment too. We both loved her. We both put that love before the lives of others."

"Except I'm not torturing myself over it," William replied snidely, confirming the mental connection also went both ways as Nathan had spent plenty of days blaming himself for all that had happened, punishing himself with regrets for all the things he had done - and the things he hadn't done.

Nathan turned and started back towards his truck, tempted to drive away and leave William behind but the rise in anxiety at the back of his mind had him sighing heavily. His own peace of mind and body was now connected to that sociopath and he wouldn't put it passed William to hurt himself deliberately, knowing Nathan would feel it too, just out of spite. He sat behind the wheel and waited, not turning to look as William sat in the passenger seat beside him.

"So. I could eat." William rubbed his hands together.

So that was the other sensation Nathan felt rolling off William: hunger. Starting the engine he pulled away, deciding to head home rather than risk anyone recognizing William in town. When he got home he left William to fend for himself, refusing to be the man's personal slave. Later, he watched as William settled down on the far end of the couch. He had questions and though he knew better than to believe every word that fell from William's duplicitous lips he knew William had a tendency to wrap the truth within his lies. It was just a matter of untangling them.

"You were connected to Mara, so why didn't you die with her?"

William raised both eyebrows.

"WOW! You really don't slide into these questions, do you? Just go straight for the jugular." William grinned. "I always liked that about you, Nathan."

"And you're avoiding the question as usual," Nathan sneered. "Just one more thing I disliked about you."

All he gained was an even wider grin, as if this was all just a game to William. 

"Oh come on," he wheedled, "If you wanted me dead you would have done it when I was trapped under that rock."

William wasn't stupid and had easily guessed Nathan was looking for answers on what would happen if one of them should die... preferably William, he thought.

"I guessed I missed my opportunity."

"Makes two of us," William added.

They had both shown a little compassion and mercy towards each other after the cave-in.

Although every ounce of him screamed to kick William out of his house to go sleep on a bench in the park for all he cared, he found himself grabbing the spare set of linen from the hall closet and tossing it William's direction.

"You have the couch."

Nathan lay in bed awake for hours, listening at first to the sounds of William settling down for the night, and then to the silence. He hadn't a clue what he was going to do about William but at least the physical connection applied only to touch that was hard enough to cause pain rather than feeling everything. Finally he drifted off to sleep only to awaken in darkness to a strange sensation running through his body. It took a moment to realize he was hard, and the sensation was ghost fingers wrapped almost painfully tight around his cock. Pleasure and pain, flip sides of the same coin, and he felt himself slowly drowning in pleasure, amplified by William's touch on his own body. Nathan wanted to rush downstairs and make it stop, make *him* stop, but just as badly he wanted more, wanted to lose himself in the pleasure igniting every nerve ending, spiraling him into ecstasy. He came with a gasp, feeling the connection between him and William vibrate between them, clean and sharp.

Afterwards he felt angry, recalling those nights when Audrey would awaken him, and the desperation in their love making as she made him slide into her, thrusting hard as she fell apart beneath him. He'd always loved those moments, feeling her respond to his every touch even as he reveled in being able to feel her in turn, but now he wondered how many times William had been behind those desperately amorous sessions. Had she been reacting to William's ghostly touch rather than him?

Nathan threw back the covers and started to rise but his brain caught up with his emotions, wondering if this was just one more power play from William. He decided not to give William the satisfaction of seeing him affected by William's self-abuse. He would wait a few hours and get some payback by showing William two could play at that game, deliberately ignoring the voice in his head that warned him he was playing with fire.

He didn't get a chance as his phone rang just before dawn, dragging him out to investigate an accident out by the harbor, but he did spend a moment standing in the doorway, staring at the huddled lump beneath the blankets. William was curled up small and Nathan felt a pang of guilt from knowing it was an unconscious position for defense even while asleep. Just one more reminder that the last five hundred years hadn't been that great for William, even if the man had deserved it.

When he came home two hours later, William was gone.

****

William wandered slowly through the streets, making his way towards the town center. After five hundred years in the void with nothing but dead and dying trees in every direction, and the occasional cave, he had spent hours wandering through the streets of Haven or just gazing out at the sea, enjoying the constant motion of people and waves. He didn't really grasp what he had gained and lost until he was shoved back through that doorway in the old lighthouse, back to the devastated woods and air so thick with pollutants from Croatoan's rage that no human could survive more than a few hours without a porous shield made of aether.

He reached the harbor and stopped for a while gazing out at the boats bobbing on the water, enjoying the fresh breeze and the warm sun caressing his face. He let his memories slide back to his final days in the void.

When he heard the crash he hadn't expected to find Nathan Wuornos at the bottom of the pit he'd dug. The only reason he agreed to help was because Nathan must have arrived through a thinny and expected to leave the same way, and William intended to use it too, with or without the human. He shrugged inwardly. Okay, so he planned to strand Nathan because Nathan had been the biggest thorn in his side during his time in Haven, coming between him and Mara-Audrey. He knew the void would be killing Nathan from the moment he stepped through the thinny so he just needed to bide his time and either convince Nathan to tell him where to find the thinny or simply follow him back to it.

He'd found the destroyed barn during one of his forays into the dying woods, recognizing it from its last scenario as a bar to add reality to the final touches of Mara's new persona - Lexie. The barn was created from aether - the element of the void - so he guessed he ought to thank Nathan and the others for their interference as they had broken down the barrier between the barn and the void, allowing him access for the first time in centuries. He had simply followed Lexie through the thinny to Haven unseen, shrouded by the aether he carried with him. His stash, as Nathan had called it.

He'd been back to the site of the destroyed barn a few times but had never seen anything other than debris so it was obvious the control crystal had remained hidden from him intentionally.

Until the guardian told him otherwise with just a single, curt negative, he truly believed the barn had been created to punish Mara, forcing her to live out other lives for just a few months at a time, slowly fixing the Troubles they had created together using the aether he collected from the void. She spent her waking months believing she was someone else, with no memory of Mara or of him. His punishment seemed as cruel in counterpoint, exiled and yet still connected to Mara, able to feel and sometimes even see through her eyes for those too few months every twenty-seven years, yet unable to touch her, unable to hear her voice. Just an awareness that she still existed to keep him going through the long years spent alone, with a monster hunting him through the void for his life force.

Croatoan.

He should have known Charlotte would have persuaded them to save her daughter rather than banishing her to the void with him, pushing all the blame upon him. They exiled Mara's father because he had figured out how to use the aether on one of their kind, using it to save Mara when she was a sick and dying child. William knew he had a lot of skill with the aether but Mara had it inside her, able to manipulate it into whatever shape and form she chose as she tried to replicate her father's experiments. She wanted to find a way to strike back at the people she believed had destroyed her beloved father. William knew his skills paled in comparison to Mara's. His crimes against the humans paled in comparison too. The Harker curse was one of her triumphs, and all he had done with the Harker baby was undo his own work in tempering the curse to activate only in puberty. He recalled Mara had disapproved of his meddling at the time until he pointed out the humans would simply let their family line die, never having children, and the curse would die with them. At least his way she could admire her work for generations.

It didn't make him a hero or even a good person, though he would never have undone his work on the Harker curse if he hadn't already used up so many other options for freeing Mara from the Audrey persona. He had to give Audrey no choice but to tap into Mara's memories, into the aether bonded to her from childhood, and it had worked. He had seen Mara in that final touch before he fell back into the void, and he waited, and waited, convinced she would find a way to bring him back to her.

He thought he would feel if Mara died but Nathan's words to the guardian gave him the first uneasy feeling. He'd noticed the connection between him and Mara fading, sensing her less and less, and then not at all, and convinced himself the humans had found a way to dampen the connection. Nathan's words later in the cave confirmed his worse fears. Mara had finally succeeded in troubling one of their kind - herself - and Charlotte had chosen the version of her daughter that she had always wanted; Audrey Parker instead of Mara. Anger and grief swept over him at first, and he wanted to make them all pay - humans and his people. Telling his aether-conjured bodyguard to snap Nathan's neck was just the start because if he couldn't have Mara then Nathan couldn't have Audrey.

Childish, maybe.

Perhaps he needed to hear some home truths, to see beyond the delusions he had woven around his connection with Mara. He'd always known he loved her more than she loved him but in his head he was still special to her. Still important to her.

Duke Crocker... and Mara. Now that was an image he really didn't need inside his head. She had replaced him with a human filled with aether transferred to him through the Crocker curse, and the delusion of importance, of being her beloved, had crashed around William, making him see clearly for the first time in centuries.

He'd seen the way Nathan looked at Audrey, and he'd seen the way she looked back at him, and he knew he would have never seen the same love in Mara's eyes for him. Perhaps it was grief, apathy, anger, or a mixture of all three that made him spare Nathan's life. Perhaps in that moment he loved a human more than he loved himself or Mara, and if Croatoan was in Haven then for the first time he was actually safer in the void. He didn't expect to be on the receiving end of any compassion from Nathan Wuornos. This was the human who had shot him while he was unarmed, the man who had kneed him in the groin, and who had viciously shoved him back through the portal into the void. He could forgive the knee to the groin because he had deliberately punched Nathan knowing he was one of only two beings who was immune to the Troubles, knowing Nathan would feel the shock and pain of the blow against his jaw if only momentarily.

He didn't expect to be handed the means to escape the void. To go home.

They seized him the moment he entered his home realm, stripping him of everything to ensure he carried no aether with him. They judged him just as harshly as before and he thought the worse they could do to him was send him back to the void. Time moved differently in his realm. A month for him equated to several years in Haven, and in those weeks they devised a new punishment for him, and new form of exile. They linked him to a human who was already searching for atonement for his part in extending the Troubles and causing the deaths of so many. They connected him to Nathan Wuornos and sent him back to Haven.

His initial fear had faded when he realized the Troubles were gone, and so was Croatoan. The town itself looked slightly different as if parts of it had recently been rebuilt, which was likely considering Croatoan had found a way into the human world, to Haven. Croatoan had laid waste to the void during his centuries of exile and his destructive rage would have followed him here too. It also explained why Nathan was living alone without Audrey. She was gone too, probably nobly sacrificing herself for the town.

William pushed away from the harbor wall and headed up the main street, glancing in store windows, and stopped abruptly when he saw a too familiar face. Mara was gone, but this wasn't Audrey either. Another persona, which didn't make sense because the only aether he had felt in the whole of Haven resided inside Nathan, undoubtedly put there by Croatoan. If there were no more Troubles then there was no need to have another Mara persona to help fix them. He waited for her navigate her way out of the store, pushing a baby carriage.

"Hi," he gave her a small wave then held out his hand. "I'm William."

She looked at him in confusion before holding out her hand but there was no spark of connection between them.

"Hi, I'm Paige... and this is James." She indicated towards the baby boy. "Do I know you?"

"Perhaps in a former life-,"

"Get away from her!"

William jerked back, releasing her hand, quickly gathering himself before turning smoothly to face Duke Crocker.

"Crocker. Now here's someone I hoped never to see again."

"Step away," came another order from behind him and William straightened when he realized it was one of the town's deputies, a human he had troubled for fun. It wasn't even a bad trouble, just made him unable to write anything but the word, ASS, which must have made his reports very interesting. Certainly not his most inventive trouble but it humored him at the time.

William backed off several steps, hands raised, smile slipping when he saw the look of venom in the man's eyes.

"You really should speak with Sheriff Wuornos before you pull that trigger."

William made the mistake of taking a single step forward, heard Duke shout, "Don't shoot!", but jerking back as the bullet hit him square in the chest. He dropped to his knees, feeling the blood filling his perforated lung. Nobody did anything for the longest time, just stared at him as if they hoped he would die right there in front of them.

"Duke!"

He recognized not-Mara's voice - Paige - and felt Duke drop beside him as if guilt had spurred him into action, helping to lower him to the ground. All William could think of was Nathan, and how he would also be lying somewhere in an expanding pool of blood with his lung filling too. Dying.

"Not connected," Duke mumbled, looking up at an unharmed Paige and probably remembering what had happened when Nathan shot him all those months earlier.

"Nath'n," William croaked, bloodied fingers clutching at Duke's shirt. "Connected to Nath..."

"No. No." Duke looked up. "Call a medic!"

Duke dragged someone else down to take his place supporting William, and rushed off, demanding answers on Nathan's whereabouts from the deputy who had shot him.

William lost consciousness soon after and when he opened heavy eyes minutes, hours, perhaps days later, he was in haven's hospital wired up to several machines. His body was already healing fast but he took a moment to concentrate on the connection to Nathan, expecting to find it gone because humans were so frail compared to his people, and confused by his mixed feelings of potential loss. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found the connection as strong as before, strangely unwilling to entertain the idea of Nathan dying because of him.

Turning his head he realized he was in a semi-private room, with Nathan in the bed next to his. He could see the rise and fall of his chest and realized the aether inside Nathan had probably activated sufficiently to help him heal just as fast. Certainly it would have saved his life in this instance.

Nathan woke up a few hours later. "I should have known someone would shoot you on sight," he said weakly, sarcastically.

William laughed softly, without humor.

****

Nathan packed the last of his bags into the back of his truck. The rest of his possessions were already packed up and on route to a small town near Salem in Massachusetts, where he'd be replacing the town sheriff. It seemed the best solution to keep both him and William safe, or safer as a sheriff's position came with its own risks. At least no one would know William there so he was less likely to be shot on sight... again. He knew it was better for him too, giving him a chance to start a new life away from Haven and all its memories - good and bad. It meant he wouldn't catch sight of Paige occasionally, and feel the grief from knowing Audrey was gone forever.

It had taken a month to make all the arrangements, keeping William on a short leash to avoid more animosity, of which there was plenty. He'd even had to move them out to Garland's old shack after several groups came to his house for William, unwilling to accept that hurting William also hurt him until they saw him doubled over or bearing a matching set of bruises. Some of the Guard recalled Nathan's role in extending - worsening the Troubles - and saw it as a means of payback by attacking William knowing they'd be hurting him too.

He and William spent a month nursing each others bruises, and Nathan might have grown to resent William for all this if the delicate touch of his fingers dabbing at a split lip had not strengthened the mental connection more than the physical. He began to yearn for William's touch, and he knew William was having trouble holding back too.

Everything had changed last night.

Lying in bed naked, he could hear William still moving about in the spare room next door, and he waited until William settled into his bed before reaching down to stroke himself. He kept the touch light at first, slowly increasing the pressure as his cock filled, flicking his thumb over the sensitive bundle of nerve endings at the tip with every stroke and feeling the sensations build. He could sense when William noticed the pleasure through their connection and instead of dampening it, he gripped himself tighter, squeezing and pulling, not stopping even when the bedroom door opened and William stood on the threshold, confused and desperate.

Nathan used his other hand to throw back the sheet in invitation, unsure how William would react, and smiling inwardly when William pulled off his t-shirt and shorts before crawling into the bed next to him.

His touch was electric, setting Nathan on fire with need and desire, and that first tentative kiss deepened quickly when William met no resistance, hands splaying across his body, reaching between them to share touch and sensation as they thrust together; they fell over the edge into a different kind of void that lasted an eternity and yet no time at all. Afterwards he drew William against him, playing fingers through short blond hair that curled at the nape. He could see the fading bruises on William's chest from the most recent attack standing out against William's fairer skin and brushed them lightly, his fingernail dragging over a nipple and sending a shiver of pleasure through both of them.

"This is.. new to me," William murmured.

"I couldn't feel anything for most of my life," Nathan replied dryly.

"The Hansen curse."

Nathan shifted a little. "Why give that trouble to my ancestor?"

William shrugged. "Because he was an unfeeling bastard."

"One of yours or one of Mara's?"

William deliberated for a moment before answering, voice tinged with a little regret. "Mine. A counter-curse to the one Mara placed on the McKee's. Mara was always the more inventive in her Troubles." His thumb brushed over Nathan's lips. "We would still have this."

His words brought Nathan back to that conversation with Duke all those months earlier. For a moment he wondered what would have happened if William had come back first; if William had touched him first. Would he have imprinted on him instead of Audrey? Would he have tried to find the good in William rather than treat him as evil incarnate? He guessed it really didn't matter anymore.

His thoughts returned to the present as the passenger door closed. He felt William's hand on his knee and covered it with his own for a moment before turning the engine, pulling away slowly. When he reached the edge of the town he slowed for a moment, glancing back through the mirror at the town where he had lived all his life.

"I'm sorry to have to leave," William murmured.

"I'm not," Nathan replied, easing his foot back down on the gas to pick up speed.

After last night and the comfort he found in William's arms, he had no more regrets. The past was behind him, and his present and future sat in the passenger seat beside him, and if they had to be fools for love then they could be that together. 

END  
 


End file.
